After stalling for a moment longer, he finally made a decision.
"I guess I should just pick it and live with it… maybe I will be able to make a new character if I don't like it?"
[One character per soul. Deleting Characters is not available. One you pick, you cannot undo your choice.]
"Well great, wish you told me that from the start!"
*Sigh* "Ok. Based on my matching, the best class for me is obviously demon hunter."
"I choose demon hunter"
[Choose the Demon Hunter class?]
"Yes."
[Accepting…]
Kai felt weird for a moment, as if an ethereal blanket passed through his body. Suddenly, he looked at his hands.
"My hands are real again!" excited for a moment before he realised "... my hands look different."
Gone were the bony spindly fingers of a half-starved sickly orphan, replaced by the hands of what seemed to be a piano player - long and slender, graceful and delicate.
"Nice…" Kai thought as he moved them around in front of his face before he was distracted by the system's notifications once more.
[Done. Congratulations! You are now a demon hunter!]
[With your class choice complete, you will now enter the world of Slay. Goodbye!]
"Wait, wasn't this called slay online? So the world is called Slay?"
Before he knew it, a white flash happened before his eyes and he found himself in the middle of a medieval city.
"Wow…" he backed up in shock, only to be stopped by the edge of a fountain in the middle of this large square - though he stopped himself from falling in.
The game had just reset its servers, and although this was one of the many tutorial cities across the Slay world, it was quickly filling up with many other level-one people.
As he watched, many were casting magic and testing their skills around him.
Kai didn't understand that you couldn't damage other people so he was fearful of being hurt.
"Ugh, I need to get out of here…" Kai looked around to see where most people were going.
His eyes followed many people leaving town through a gate guarded by two dangerous looking men.
As he stared at them, a sign began floating above their heads.
[Town Guard - Level ???]
"Hmm I wonder what the question marks mean…Oh well, I'll just walk right past. Town guards should be like policemen, so they probably won't hurt me if I don't do anything to attract attention."
He made his way to the gate. He attracted some weird stares as he dodged the magic abilities and sword skills as he walked towards the gate, but just as he was about to step through, a guard called out.
"Halt!"
Kai froze. The guard only yelled casually, but it was so high level that its voice struck fear into Kai's heart.
"What the hell is this…" Kai thought to himself. Out of instinct he wanted to run, but he simply froze from the fear, his body unable to move.
The guard gestured back to a large three-story building in town where many adventurers were seen rushing in and out.
"You have to register at the adventurer guild before you can leave town."
"O-? Oh… Right…" Kai pretended he understood as he walked back to the large building.
He wasn't sure where to go or what to do, so he simply followed what other adventurers were doing.
This was when someone attacked him from behind, he didn't notice until he saw a spear sticking out of his chest.
"Ah!? What the hell!" he stepped forward.
Everyone looked at him as if he was making a joke.
Kai turned around with a shocked expression, prepared to yell at whoever did that.
"Wait, why doesn't it hurt…"
The spear wielder looked at him oddly, "What?"
"Oh… n-nothing…" this was when Kai looked around and analysed what was actually going on.
Numerous spells were buzzing around him with weapons flying all around - yet there was no blood - no, what was weird to Kai was that some people simply ignored the attacks as if they weren't even there.
"Uh huh… right. This must be a safe location or something." Kai was starting to understand.
"I guess I should head into the guild."
Making his way into the adventurer guild, he noticed a line of adventurers. He quickly entered into one to save time as he looked at where the lines were leading.
The one he was in led to a booth with a woman sitting behind it.
The booth read "Adventurer sign-up"
"Phew, I'm in the right line" Kai thought.
The next line led to a booth which had the same sign above it. The third line however led to a booth which said "Purchases".
The third line was much smaller, and after seeing people leave the counter, many either looked disappointed or excited.
As one was leaving, Kai got his attention.
"Excuse me, what's the purchases line for?"
"Oh, it lets you buy plots of land and trade in quest points for unique items."
"Oh.. quest points, right, thanks!" Kai pretended to understand as he realised these things would be explained to him soon.
The other person added "You have to get in fast, as the plots of land will run out quickly when everyone starts buying them." With a shrug, the other person left.
"I see… I wonder how useful a plot of land will be." Kai thought to himself as he slowly got to the sign-up booth.
A slender blonde-haired woman sat behind the booth.
"Hello sir, would you like to sign up as an adventurer? This will allow you to level up, access quests, sell monster parts and start your journey."
Kai paused for a moment. He didn't notice it before but the woman was beautiful - at least he thought so until he noticed her long pointy ears.
"Eugh" he thought to himself. "What kinda mutated freak…" he then realised he still had to answer the question.
"Yes please." he kept his rude opinions to himself.
"Hold out your hand."
The blonde haired woman waved her hand over his and a tattoo appeared on his hand.
"What the?" before Kai could get angry, the tattoo faded.
"That's your guild mark. It's your identification, so don't lose it" she said with a wink. "You can now access quests, bounties and activities. Congratulations. Next please!"
Kai quickly stood to the side, his face still scrunched up in disgust from her pointy ears as he tried to process the information.
Another player saw Kai's face scrunching up and gave him a slight smile.
"Hey" the other person said "You must be a holy-type class?"
"Uh…"
"Holy type classes hate unnatural things. It's not actually you who hates them, but your own class which can make you feel these things. It's cool how this game can change your feelings to make your class seem more realistic huh?"
"Change my feelings? So that's why I reacted so strongly… even though I thought she was beautiful at first."
"Heh I thought she was beautiful too."
Kai decided to hide that he was a demon hunter. It was no one's business - and besides, he would probably be either pitied or attacked by jealous people. After all, only the terminally ill were allowed to transfer their consciousness into the game - and only those who left their bodies behind were given access to hidden classes.
"Well, I better have a look at these quests. Goodbye.."
"Hang on a moment, would you like to come help me with mine? I've got a quest that gives loads of exp, but it needs two people to do it. Are you interested, Kai?"
"Oh- Sure… how did you know my name?"
"You must be new" he smiled lightly "think about analysing me and you'll see my name appear above my head."
Kai stared at him as he thought this, remembering how he started at the town guards - and sure enough, he found some floating words.
[Donley - Level 2]
"Oh, cool…" Kai thought as he stared at the words "Donley."
Donley nodded "Yep. You should have a party request from me. It's kind of a way for us to share experience points which is what we need to level up… level up basically means we get stronger." Donley explained it, remembering Kai is 'new' - or 'a noob' as many people in the gaming world called it.
"Right, I understand."
"You should also check your inventory and skills, usually they give you something at the start. Obviously, it gives us all clothes."
"Right. Hang on."
Kai opened his inventory with an eager expectation.
[Hand crossbow]
4 damage
[Heavy crossbow]
Immobile
50 damage
[Silver dagger]
Bonus damage vs demonic
2 damage
[Leather Boots]
+2% speed
+5 Health
[Leather Vambraces]
+2% Damage with ranged
+5 health
[Small Bolts] x 100
[Heavy Bolts] x 5
"Oh, I have something that gives me health?"
"Oh wow, is it armour? That's really rare. Usually they only give you a simple weapon at game start."
"Oh, awesome… so how do I check my health?"
Donley chuckled again "Just think 'menu'. That will show you everything you need to know."
"R-right…"
"Donley waited patiently as he stared at Kai with hungry eyes "Man, scamming this noob is gonna be so easy… he doesn't even know he had those items."
In Slay Online, you couldn't kill other players unless they were in a PVP zone with you. Killing someone would make them drop 50% of their equipped items and they would respawn at a nearby town - however, killing a citizen of Slay (a citizen was someone like Kai who had severed the connection to their physical bodies) would only result in them dropping one equipped item.
To protect those who had migrated their souls into Slay, another hidden protection was added after the world reset.
If you killed someone who had their soul here, you would be secretly marked as a soul-killer for 24 hours. If a citizen killed you during this time, you would lose 100% of your equipped items.
The mark would stop you from un-equipping items, and only show those who had their souls here would be able to see the soul-killer mark.
If you took any items from a citizen, and they killed you, the stolen items would be returned to the citizen - even if you didn't have them equipped.
On top of that, the citizens were allowed to damage you inside safe zones if you had the mark.
Of course, Donley didn't know about the second part of this hidden mechanic - there weren't many people who were terminally ill like Kai was, and there was no information about this on the forums, as people who migrated their souls had no way to post on any of the online forums - they could only read them.
Donley simply thought this was another player like him, a noob who he could scam on day one.